With the help of the Tū Manawa Active Aotearoa Fund, the Regional Sports Organisation was able to deliver three different initiatives designed to make Netball accessible for everyone.

The initiatives include Netball Fitness - introducing new people to the game and what's available or required, a Secondary Schools Fast5 Competition, and expanding the reach of the already existing Walking Netball Programme. 

Beginning in January 2021, all programmes have been run by Mid Canterbury Netball’s Netball Development Officer, Natalie Corbett and have all seen success to varying degrees.

Walking Netball, in particular, has seen incredible results since its initial introduction into the region.

“Walking Netball was something we already had running but we knew that with a particular focus and the help of some funding, we could make it so much better, and widen our reach, getting so many more people active,” says Mid Canterbury Netball Centre Manager, Erin Tasker.

Natalie and her team introduced a new night-time session as a trial on a Tuesday evening alongside their already existing morning session – the reason for this was to attract more rangatahi to get involved with the adapted version of the game.

“We had found young people often couldn’t come during the day due to work and school commitments and after initially attracting good numbers when we first introduced it on a Tuesday, numbers began to fluctuate.

“Our overall aim was to get as many people active as possible, by running it at different times of the day to suit everyone and we did that, with an average of around 20 people turning up to our first few trial sessions,” she adds.

After the initial trial proved so successful, the team put it to the participants as to whether they wanted to keep it going, and they did. So, they have run morning and evening Walking Netball sessions on Tuesdays during the school term since.

The numbers speak for themselves.

“Sixty-two people attend our evening Walking Netball sessions all up, and even now on average we're getting 18 people turning up to our evening sessions. Our morning session has also grown significantly, from an average of 10-12 turning up regularly at the start of 2021, to an average of around 21.

“It's amazing watching them - they have so much fun and there's so many laughs had,” she adds.

Rangatahi aren’t the only new participants to have joined the Walking Netball sessions with a group from IDEA Services arriving with a number of their disabled clients keen to join in the fun.

“They have absolutely loved being able to get on court and play Netball - seeing them interact with the Walking Netball crew in that first couple of weeks was just awesome. It's not just the IDEA Services clients, we've had so many new people turn up to both our morning and evening sessions, and it's great to see them getting on court - some for the first time ever, and some for the first time in 20 or 30 years.”

“One young lady in her early 20’s, who has an intellectual disability, came along to the first night of Walking Netball and went on to join a social Netball team for the winter - this was very exciting as she'd tried to join teams in the past but sadly no teams would take her,” adds Tasker.

Of course, the sessions have not been without their challenges with the Mid Canterbury Netball team struggling at times to cater to everyone’s varying degrees of experience.

“We have begun looking at ideas for the future as to how we can best do this. We have come up with a plan which forms part of our next Tū Manawa application to address this,” says Tasker.

The next initiative - the Secondary Schools Fast5 Competition was something that had been previously trialled but with little success, however it saw better results this time around with the help of the Tū Manawa Active Aotearoa Fund.

This competition was run over a five-week period specifically for secondary school-aged rangatahi with six teams entered in the competition.

Following this, another Fast5 Competition open to all ages was held which four secondary school teams entered. This meant a secondary school grade could be included within this open competition.

The last of the three initiatives was the Netball Fitness and introduction aspect. This part of the programme offered participants two free ‘Introduction to Netball’ fitness sessions which lead into a Fitness Bootcamp open to all.

“We really didn't know how this would go - we knew that we'd get existing players turning up to the Netball Fitness sessions but didn't know how we'd go with getting new people along. That's why we ran the first two sessions for free, aimed solely at those new to Netball, or maybe returning to Netball after many years away. 

“We didn't get a huge uptake, but from this, two ladies who came along went on to join social Netball teams and played all winter, which was an awesome outcome,” adds Tasker.

Find out more about the Tū Manawa Active Aotearoa Fund – Click here 

Article added: Tuesday 25 January 2022